Background:Maternal health status might have an important effect on breastfeeding, growth, and general health of the infants.Objectives:This study was conducted to assess the association between maternal mental health and breastfeeding status of mothers in Kashan province.Patients and Methods:This case-control study was conducted on 458 mothers in two groups of unsuccessful breastfeeding (case) and successful breastfeeding (control) attending Kashan province health clinics. In this study, the GHQ questionnaire and clinical interview were employed to collect data. The data were statistically analyzed using Chi-square and Fisher’s exact tests.Results:It was found that mothers of the case group had a greater susceptibility to depression than those of the control group, that is, breastfeeding status was directly associated with susceptibility to depression (P = 0.001, OR = 5.48). Furthermore, there was a significant association between basic characteristics such as maternal occupational status (P = 0.04) or their educations (P = 0.006) with breastfeeding. Besides, clinical interview revealed that mixed depression and anxiety disorder was the most prevalent type of psychological disorder in the case group.Conclusions:Screening depression during pregnancy and postpartum period appeared to be necessary and it should be incorporated into prenatal and postnatal care due to its influence on mothers’ successful breastfeeding.

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Background: Management of child healthcare can be negatively affected by incomplete recording, low data quality, and lack of data integration of health management information system (HMIS) to support decision making and public health program needs. Given the importance of identifying key determinants of child health via capturing and integrating accurate and high-quality information, we aim to address this gap through the development and testing requirements for an integrated child health information system. Subjects and Method: A five-phase design thinking approach including empathizing, defining, ideation, prototyping, and testing was applied. We employed observation and interviews with the health workers at the primary health care network to identify end-users challenges and needs using tools in human-centered design and focus group discussion. Then, a potential solution to the identified problems was developed as an integrated maternal and child health information system (IMCHIS) prototype and tested using Software Quality Requirements and Evaluation Model (SQuaRE) ISO/IEC 25000. Results: IMCHIS was developed as a web-based system with 74 data elements and seven maternal and child healthcare requirements. The requirements of "child disease" with weight (0.26), "child nutrition" with weight (0.20), and "prenatal care" with weight (0.16) acquired the maximum weight coefficient. In the testing phase, the highest score with the weight coefficient of 0.48 and 0.73 was attributed to efficiency and functionality characteristics, focusing on software capability to fulfill the tasks that meet users' needs. Conclusion: Implementing a successful child healthcare system integrates both maternal and child healthcare information systems to track the effect of maternal conditions on child health and support managing performance and optimizing service delivery. The highest quality score of IMCHIS in efficiency and functionality characteristics confirms that it owns the capability to identify key determinants of child health.

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